1 2 NAVIGATING COOK 3 APRIL 26TH TO MAY 23RD 2020

Navigating Cook is held at Michael Reid Sydney in Nici Cumpston Sir Joseph Banks and Dr Daniel Solander conjunction with Hordern House, rare book dealers. Baden Croft Robert Benard after Captain James Cook Anne McCormick and Derek McDonnell, the directors of Hordern House are among the world’s foremost Lucy Dyson John and William Cary authorities in the books, maps, globes and materials Marc Etherington Captain James Cook associated with early exploration and travel. The Rew Hanks Captain James Cook and Charles Green scholarly depth and material riches to be uncovered by Hordern House within Navigating Cook anchor the Derek Henderson J. Cheevers, after Captain James Cook genesis of the Cook myth. Significant contemporary Alesandro Ljubicic Nathaniel Dance (engraved by F. Bartolozzi) Australian and New Zealand Artists then clearly chart Robert Malherbe Nathaniel Dance (engraved by John Keyes Sherwin) the changing attitudes to Cook’s first contact. Joseph McGlennon John Hawkesworth Paul Nabulumo Namarinjmak James Magra Kathleen Nanima Rambler Lewis Pingo Jordan Richardson Alexander Shaw Joan Ross Sarah Stone Trevor Smith Dr. Christian Thompson AO Wayne Youle

Cover: Dr Christian Thompson AO Museum of Others (Othering the Explorer, James Cook), 2016 4 FOREWORD FOREWORD 5 Michael Reid OAM & Toby Meagher Derek McDonnell & Anne McCormick

We filter and cherry-pick history in order to make our “Common Friends To Mankind” of other European explorers, we might argue that the national myths, according to the myths we believe And the legacy of Captain James Cook, Fellow of the approach of Cook was considerably milder and more need making. In the 18th Century, the narrative, Royal Society, (1728-1779) is what exactly? Myths During the American War of Independence, Benjamin humane. There were episodes of violence, of course, story and myth of Captain Cook was that of a stern constantly shift and are reformed in order to make Franklin instructed captains at sea that, should they starting infamously with the landing at Poverty explorer, a Quaker, navigator, cartographer and a better understanding of our times, specifically for come into contact with Cook’s vessel, they must “not Bay, when the British fired on the Māori with fatal courageous sea captain who lead his men in adverse our purposes. Navigating Cook, navigates the shifting consider her an enemy, nor suffer any plunder to be consequences, and essentially finishing with Cook’s conditions to chart almost a third of the globe. His myth of Cook. Art has always been at the heart of made of the effects contained in her, nor obstruct death at Kealakekua Bay. But we should remember achievements and legacy for many hundreds of years mythmaking. Such was the role of the 18th Century her immediate return to England by detaining her the extent of the three voyages, at sea for altogether were viewed exclusively through the lens of scientific Artist to build the myth of Cook, so too, is it the role or sending her into any other part of Europe or to 122 of the 146 months from the departure of the first and geographical knowledge- lightly coloured by a hew of the contemporary Artist to interrogate it. Myth- America; but that you treat the said Captain Cook and voyage to the return of the third. The few episodes of authoritarian cold. making is never fixed; it must chart a course for new his people with all civility and kindness… as common of conflict during that time demonstrate Cook’s horizons on ever-shifting seas. friends to mankind”. usually diplomatic and humane approach. We would Over the first twenty years of the 21st Century do well to remember that he was an explorer, and the established euro-centric view of Cook has been Common friends to mankind they were: though in a hardly deserves the blame for colonial atrocities in reviewed, revised and recalibrated with the lens of more nuanced age, and since the effects of original which he has sometimes been implicated in recent scrutiny, honing in on the 28th April 1770, and Cook’s European discovery morphed into colonisation, years. A fairer case could be made against English first contact with the Gweagal people of the Eora colonialism and beyond, things are more complicated. officers and early governors over the later period nation. First contact began as a standoff and ended A quarter of a millennium after Cook the effects of the of European expansion for callous and, sometimes, as a skirmish. Eschewing the stance of Quakers; the European discoveries are still playing out. Relations genocidal cruelty, than against Cook for the crimes of first blow shall not be theirs; Cook is recorded to have between Māori and Pākehā, between European his successors. fired twice on the Gweagal warriors. Once, between settlers and the Aboriginal population of Australia, two warriors, with a musket. A stone is then known to between native Hawaiians and Haole, remain complex Cook set himself the task of sailing “as far as I think have been returned from the shore. Cook fired again, despite long-running attempts at reconciliation, it possible for man to go”, an ambition perhaps with second small shot musket aimed at the legs of an some better envisaged than others, and shifting with deliberately echoed in the exhortation two centuries older, presumably senior warrior. Shots having been fluctuating attitudes and approaches to the intricate later to “boldly go where no man has gone before”; fired, troops then landed, and so began the relentless and enormous issues involved. his great descendants at NASA demonstrated their march of guns, germs and steel that disposed of debt by naming the space shuttle Endeavour. Cook’s people. In the context of the frequently aggressive behaviours discoveries pepper, essentially create, the map of 6 7

the Pacific north and south. He reached further into All right-thinking people acknowledge the traditional the Antarctic circle than any other voyager would for owners of every land upon which Cook touched, 140 years. He brought scientific method to bear on though he was not a coloniser but an explorer. Change the process of voyages of discovery; he searched for was inevitable as the far-flung parts of the world the southern continent and discovered its absence. became known to each other, but where colonisation He was responsible for the European discovery of by Europeans eventuated, it happened later, carried the eastern extremities of Australia, the Hawaiian out by other agencies; where it was based on Islands, and many points in between. His numerous knowledge of his discoveries, it was never he that remarkable feats of seamanship included saving ordained it or carried it out. In an operatic sense, Endeavour inside the Barrier Reef, and navigating however, it was as though he paid the price in advance: its treacherous inner waters; his humane treatment having revisited the Hawaiian Islands and observing of his company was not limited to his effective the extraordinary ritual and power of its Indigenous conquering of the scurvy curse, but extended to his People, he died there. Parallels abound, with both decent behaviour in command, and a fair treatment of Christian notions of sacrifice, and with traditional others evident in his honest journals. Hawaiian beliefs in Lono and the ritual related to the return of the god. Cook carried out careful, skillful, extensive charting wherever he went. The way that marine charts continue to be constructed, even today with electronic charting, is such that original discoveries remain on the map for as long as no correction is required by subsequent observation. To see how much of Cook’s charting remains as gospel puts us in mind of Christopher Wren’s epitaph in St Paul’s: if it’s a monument you need, just have a look around. For Cook, just look at the charting of our world. He is joined by other great navigators but he put his mark on the map first, and there it stays. 8 NAVIGATING COOK 9 John McDonald

After the bicentennial celebrations of 1970 Captain In those days we put Cook (literally) on a pedestal. sockets. The portrait is held, in mock echo of the way It’s absurd, but the Australiana is not entirely Cook’s place seemed assured as one of the indelible Nowadays we are more inclined to sympathise with the those Eora warriors who met Cook might have held inappropriate. One of the sources of Cook’s appeal to heroes of Australian history, but by the turn of the indigenous view, that it was impossible to “discover” their shields, seeking protection from the objectifying those late 19th century colonial patriots was the sense century he was becoming known as a villain. While an a country that had been inhabited for thousands of gaze of the explorers. Through the artist’s eyes that that he was himself an Australian avant la lettre. This earlier generation built idols to Cook and worshipped years, let alone “take possession” by the mere raising gaze is turned back on the landing party. Thompson was because of his background as the son of a farm at their feet, today those same monuments are likely of a flag. Cook was now viewed as a harbinger of doom, aims to appropriate the imperial overview that looked labourer who rose to become a captain in the King’s to be found besmirched by paint and slogans. an agent of imperialism who opened the door to the upon the peoples of the Pacific as exotic savages. On Navy through his own diligence and hard work. To invasion that would commence in 1788. To take but one the shores of Botany Bay it could just as easily be those men of colonial high society, who had come from Although he was barely mentioned during the first example of the new contempt for the great navigator, argued that it was Cook and his men who were the working class or even convict backgrounds, Cook’s hundred years of the colony, in the years leading up think of Daniel Boyd’s No Beard paintings, of 2007- exotic ones. story mirrored their rise through the ranks. to Federation Cook began to gather new admirers. 09, which portrayed Cook as a pirate from a B movie, To those nationalist groups who dreamed of an complete with eye patch and parrot. Dance’s portrait of Cook was said to be the best In dedicating a park to Cook in 1899, Sydney politician, independent Australia but remained infatuated with available likeness, but it has fixed his image for all Joseph Carruthers declared: “His life is a noble our British heritage, Cook was the man to whom Jordan Richardson sums up the polarisation of time as a stern, unsmiling personality. It reflects exemplar to the people of Australia, who live under we owed everything. If he didn’t actually ‘discover’ attitudes in his diptych, Captain James Cook, the formality of the late 18th century, with its Neo- institutions which freely open the door to fame and Australia, as it was popularly believed, he was the one Discoverer of New Lands, Captain James Cook, classical tastes. We see this in Lewis Pingo’s silver power to those who exhibit even in a less degree those who took possession of the land for England. Destroyer of Peoples. The two images, copied from medallion of 1784, made on behalf of the Royal Society great qualities so vivid in Cook’s life.” Nathaniel Dance’s 1776 portrait of Cook, which is also in commemoration of Cook. One side shows Cook’s Although he showed little enthusiasm for the included in this show in the form of an engraving, bust in silhouette; on the reverse, the allegorical Carruthers, who would become Cook’s greatest continent in his journals, and would have spent no are exactly identical. It’s a reminder that our view figure of Dame Fortune leaning on a rudder. Through champion, might not have appreciated the humour more than ten days on shore if the Endeavour hadn’t of Cook as hero or villain is a largely a matter of contemporary eyes such iconography can often look of Trevor Smith’s woollen bust of the explorer, but been laid up for seven weeks after striking the Great interpretation. merely quaint or pompous. it’s the perfect answer to the grandiloquent idolatry Barrier Reef, many began to consider Cook the of 1899, and perhaps to some of the more savage father of our nation. In her 1981 book, The Captain Christian Thompson uses the same image to different Rew Hanks takes a satirical approach in four repudiations of the past two decades. Cook Myth, Jillian Robertson (AKA. Jill, Duchess of effect, in Museum of Others (Othering the Explorer, screenprints that revisit wellknown Cook images, Where humour ends, melancholy begins – in images of Hamilton) charted the growth of this love affair, which James Cook), in which he holds up Cook’s portrait in including the Dance portrait, which finds him out of dead trees that prefigure the depredations colonists sprang to life in February 1879 when 70,000 people front of his own face. Thompson has cut two spy holes, his chair, surfing the waves in full dress uniform. In would wreak on this continent; in Derek Henderson’s turned up for the unveiling of Thomas Woolner’s allowing us to see his eyes peering out of the Captain’s another, Cook and Banks select a cane toad to whack photo of a skull in front of a map of Cook’s voyages; statue of Cook in Sydney’s Hyde Park. with a golf club. 10 11

and in Joseph McGlennon’s Ghost Ship, in which a sea eagle gazes down at a ship very like Cook’s, as it sails into a lonely, pristine harbour. We feel at once how far from home Cook has ventured, and the dangers that lurk on all sides. At the same time we know that for the Eora and the local wildlife, it was the voyagers that posed the danger – if not right away, then in the reports of the country he would take back to Britain.

Cook was no less of a ghost to his colonial admirers than he is to us today, although we can access a wealth of research unavailable to earlier times. Even on first publication, few could afford the leather-bound set of the voyages included in this exhibition, but if the books have always been collectors’ items, the information they contain is now freely available on the Internet. As for Cook himself, thanks to the labours of J.C.Beaglehole, we have a definitive edition of the journals, and a biography so authoritative that it will probably never be superceded.

Few, however, take the scholarly route to understanding Captain Cook. He has become a figure of folklore and popular culture, a superhero of the Georgian era, a proto-Australian, both sympathetic friend and deadly foe of the indigenous peoples of the Pacific. The jury is still out on Cook, and will always be. The historians have done what they could with him, but the artists will never be finished. 12 CARY, JOHN AND WILLIAM 13 Cook’s voyages the main feature on a Regency Terrestrial Globe, 1816

Pair of 18-inch diameter (455 mm) Pair of Library-sized Terrestrial and Celestial Globes: Cary’s New floor globes, height overall 42 ins. Terrestrial Globe, exhibiting the Tracks and Discoveries made by (1065 mm), diameter of stand Captain Cook; also those of Captain Vancouver on the North West 24.5 ins (620 mm). Coast of America; and M de la Perouse, on the Coast of Tartary, together with every other Improvement collected from various Each made up from two sets of Navigators to the Present Time [and] Cary’s New Celestial Globe, on eighteen gores; on their fine original which are laid down the Whole of the Stars Nebulae &c, contained in Regency mahogany stands, each the Astronomical Works of the Revd F. Wollaston FRS, De la Caille, on central turned pillar with three Herschel, Hevelius, Mayer, Flamsteed, Bradley &c. cabriole legs below with original castors, four supporting arms above holding horizon rings, complete with brass meridian circles and hour rings, glazed compass suspended between lower legs of each with blued-steel needle and 32-point compass rose.

London, Norie & Co., No. 157 Leaden Hall Street, 1 March 1816. $168,500 14 15

An impressive and rare pair of library globes, with much of its information derived from Flamsteed attention to the spade feet and to the gentle cabriole produced by the Cary firm, masters of globemaking and William Herschel and showing the discoveries of legs with brass castors facilitating easy movement”. of the late Regency period. Made in the closing stages Edmund Halley and Abbé de Lacaille. of the Age of Discovery, the terrestrial globe shows John and William Cary were active globe makers in “The World in your Hands” (1994), 4.65 (1823 reissue the tracks of the major eighteenth-century navigators London. John Cary (c.1754-1835) was also an engraver of the terrestrial); Elley Dekker, ‘Globes at Greenwich’, including Cook, La Pérouse and Vancouver, as well and dealer in maps, whilst William (c.1760-1825) made p.296; Gloria Clifton, ‘Directory of British Scientific as the less familiar 1794 track of the East Indiaman mathematical instruments. The company was one Instrument Makers 1550-1851’, p. 201 and Walpole, Captain Thomas Butler, on a pioneering of the leading English globe makers from about 1792 https://collections.rmg.co.uk/%20collections/ trading voyage from the Cape of Good Hope to China, until its closure in 1850. John William Norie, marked objects/19756.html (1827 reissue) passing to the south and east of Australia though not on the cartouches as having these for sale, was the calling at the new settlement of Port Jackson. proprietor of Norie’s “Navigation Warehouse” in London from 1799; from 1816, the year these globes This is the first edition of the Cary terrestrial globe in were made, the firm traded as Norie & Co. It is not this form: it would be reissued with revisions in 1820, clear whether Norie had the selling of the whole 1823, 1827 and 1836. Tasmania is shown as separated edition; certainly, the Carys’ own names appear as by “Basse Strait” from the Australian mainland which sellers on the cartouches of other globes made by is designated as “New Holland”, while the south coast them in the same period. of the continent is shown in correct outline; California is named New Albion; the Hawaiian islands have notes This is a handsome and impressive pair of larger about the death of Cook and the deaths of Vancouver format globes, highly evocative of their period. It personnel. Large sections of Africa are marked as is unusual to see a matched pair in such attractive “Parts unknown”. Western areas of North America are condition, and one can easily see how they would have mostly designated by their native American territory looked the part in a Regency library. A similar pair, names. perhaps with slightly faded colour, with the terrestrial globe in the 1823 reissue, is illustrated in “The World The celestial globe is by this stage fully accurate for in your Hands”, describing them as “A fine pair of the southern as well as the northern hemisphere, very typical English library globes. The evidence of a good furniture maker is to be seen in the stands, with 16 COOK, CAPTAIN JAMES 17 A full set of the official original narratives of all three of Cook’s voyages, 1773 - 1784

A set of the three voyage accounts An attractive complete set of Captain Cook’s three voyages in their comprising: Together eight volumes, large official accounts, with uniform contemporary provenance. The quarto, and two folio Atlases; series of official Cook narratives is the cornerstone of any collection uniformly bound in contemporary of books relating to the Pacific. Illustrated with marvellous engravings polished diced Russian leather, based on the work of the official artists on the voyages, including decorated in blind and gilt, atlases in Parkinson, Hodges, and Webber, the series stands as the great half binding with marbled paper sides monument to Cook’s achievements. This handsome set has the first matching the endpapers of the text and third voyages in their “best” editions and the rarely seen feature volumes; all volumes neatly respined. of a separate Atlas to the second voyage. Of the total of 204 engraved plates and maps that illustrate the three voyage accounts, 128 of them London, 1773-1784. are contained in the separate Atlas volumes where they can be seen to $68,500 best advantage in the larger format.

The first voyage is in its second and best edition, complete with the “Directions for placing the cuts” and the “Chart of the Straights of Magellan” (both of which are usually missing in the first edition), and with the new Preface containing Hawkesworth’s virulent 8-page reply to Dalrymple’s whining reviews of the first edition, and the whole volume revised by the voyage’s astronomer William Wales. The second voyage, here in its third edition, has the very desirable separate atlas containing the wonderful series of plates and maps (usually bound into the text volumes) printed on thicker paper than usual, and unusually fresh and bright. Only the largest of the maps are folded, and the views and botanical plates are even more impressive for their being in uncreased state.

The third voyage is in its second edition, often preferred for several reasons, including the fact that the Royal Society medal awarded to 18 19

Cook posthumously in 1784 appears on the title-pages; the printing was done by Hughs (rather than Strahan who printed the first edition) with the wording of the title-pages slightly modified and the text itself entirely re-set. Isaac Smith presenting a set on behalf of Cook’s widow in 1821 noted that ‘I am desired by Mrs Cook... to request your acceptance of the 4 books sent herewith being her Husband’s last Voyage round the World, as a mark of her respect... the letter press of the second edition being much superior to the first both in paper & letter press’ (quoted by Forbes, Hawaiian National Bibliography, 85). King George III’s copy of the official account, preserved in the British Library, is also an example of this second edition.

Uniform provenance in all volumes of Ebenezer John Collett (1755-1833, MP for Grampound, Cornwall from 1814 to 1818), with armorial bookplates; Francis Markham, with bookplates; private collection (Sydney)

Beddie, 650, 1226, 1552; Hill, 782, 358, 361; Holmes, 5, 24, 47.. 20 NICI CUMPSTON 21 Bared, 2020

Nici Cumpston Nici Cumpston is a proud Barkandji artist, curator and educator and Bared, 2020 has been documenting the Murray Darling Basin and its waterways since 2000. For Cumpston, ‘Rivers are our livelihood; like a trusted archival pigment print on relative, they support us by providing food, water and shelter. We rely Hahnemuller paper on them to sustain us physically, emotionally and spiritually.’ 180 x 70 cm 5 + 2 AP In this work on the sandy edge of Nookamka Lake, within a bed of fine mussel shell grit, a lone ring tree stands sentinel. The ring was made $8,000 unframed when the tree was a sapling; shaped by ancestors it is a boundary $9,500 framed marker as well as a sign indicating this as an important place for gathering and as a place of abundance. This ring tree has held watch over a sacred lake sustaining Aboriginal people from this area for millennia, as well as many different language groups who have come to share important information at this site.

But the majestic tree is dead.

Since colonisation, dramatic change continues for the Aboriginal people of the Murray Darling Basin and their waterways. The mussel shells no longer grow to the grand old age that they did when the freshwater flowed, prior to intervention and greed. Vital to the health of the river, the mussels filter and clean the water. The death of the river system speaks to a broader tragedy.

Bared exposes this change and loss, stemming from the point of Cook’s arrival through to today. But it also symbolises strength for Cumpston. A strength in Aboriginal people working together to overcome the travesty of colonisation; the over-allocation of water, the greed and the devastating water ‘buy-back’ scheme which jeopardises the livelihood of all Australians who have built their lives around river systems. 22 NICI CUMPSTON 23 Bared (triptych), 2020

Nici Cumpston Cumpston has always been astounded by the actions of Cook and the first Bared (triptych), 2020 fleet and the damaging myth that they concocted. In the year 2020, as a First Nations citizen, watching her nation still encouraged to celebrate archival inkjet print on canvas these myths, Cumpston’s feelings have escalated to being enraged. 300 x 110 cm (each panel 100 x 110 cm) Australia was occupied and managed by hundreds of different groups 2 + 1 AP of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people when Cook and his crew landed. Scientific evidence proves that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have lived here and thrived for at least 60,000 years. The $22,000 framed declaration made by Cook and his crew that this land was ‘Terra Nullius’ - no one’s land, was unfounded and remains one of the biggest unresolved criminal acts in this country’s history.

This fundamental lie continues to affect us all to this day, Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people alike. It is stopping us from moving forward as a nation, the truth needs to be told from an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander perspective. All Australians, no matter what age, need to be educated about these truths. The evidence of how we were slaughtered to make way for colonisation is still hidden. There are many important Aboriginal Elders who are sharing their knowledge of how we survived and our ongoing connection to this beautiful country.

My hope is that as a nation we are able to support Aboriginal people to continue to share their stories. I hope that through this story- sharing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people gain recognition, are supported to create a treaty, and find fair representation in the Australian Constitution. We need to have recognition before we can have equality.

Australia has been stolen; we are living on the unceded territory of all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

— Nici Cumpston, 2020 24 NICI CUMPSTON 25 Oh my Murray Darling, 2019

Nici Cumpston Oh my Murray Darling

archival pigment print on Hahnemuller paper 75 x 175 cm, image size 95 x 200 cm, framed edition of 5 + 2 AP

$8,000 unframed $9,500 framed 26 BADEN CROFT 27 Fox, 2019

Baden Croft Baden Croft is an emerging artist based in Victoria’s Mornington Fox, 2019 Peninsula. His practice is influenced by life on the Australian coast. For Croft, Captain Cook serves as an icon of exploration but also as a oil on linen devilish symbol of demise, and while he cannot be blamed solely for the 155 x 140 cm events that followed first contact, his attitude has certainly managed $5,500 framed to filter through.

Croft hopes that these paintings encourage audiences to consider what Cook represents as a symbol for change. Beyond analysis of Cook the man and his actions as an individual, Croft is interested in Cook as a symbol for the ultimate effects of colonisation.

Thick textured surfaces abound in Croft’s work. Mt. Warning, 2019 shows a twisted gum at a place named by Captain Cook from the sea as he travelled up the East Coast of Australia. Mt. Warning is also called Wollumbin, a place of cultural and traditional significance. Croft’s painting clearly questions the nature of Cook’s warning – and who exactly the warning was intended for.

In Fox, 2019, a fox has snuck into the birdhouse, he clutches his bloody prize as Captain Cook’s portrait looms in the background. 28 BADEN CROFT 29 Mt Warning, 2019

Baden Croft To me Cook is an icon of exploration but also a symbol of suffering. Mt Warning, 2019 He will forever be both the hero and the villain. To some degree Cook serves as a tangible figurehead for the dark deeds in Australia’s oil on linen colonial past. 210 x 190 cm $11,000 I learnt next-to-nothing of pre-colonial Australia in both my primary and secondary education. The period of time between first contact and the gold rush took all of five minutes of class time to cover.

We should discuss Cook today as a way to bring attention to the disgraces of Australian colonial history that have for so long been ignored or silenced.

— Baden Croft, 2020 30 SIR JOHN PRINGLE, EDITOR 31 The first appearance of Cook’s pathbreaking work on defeating scurvy, 1776

Pringle, Sir John, Editor. Published shortly after the second voyage, this is one of the most significant and one of the rarest of all the printed works relating to A discourse upon some late Cook’s voyages: the first appearance in print of Cook’s epoch-making improvements of the means for account of the successful measures taken against scurvy on the first preserving the health of mariners. two voyages. There were several later versions and translations, but Delivered at the anniversary meeting this original edition has long been acknowledged as a major rarity. of the royal society, november 30, 1776. By sir john pringle, baronet, The paper on scurvy was read to the Royal Society by its president, president. Published by their order. Sir John Pringle – in the absence of Cook himself, then just beginning his final voyage – as the year’s Copley medal award, and immediately Small quarto, [iv], 44 pp. with the published in this form. half-title, woodcut title device and headpiece, leaf C4 a cancel as usual; Pringle’s long presentation address, quoting directly from Cook and modern green quarter morocco. other sources, is followed by Cook’s paper and an extract from a letter by Cook to Pringle written from Plymouth Sound in July 1776. London, Royal Society, 1776. The paper subsequently appeared in the official account of the second $44,500 voyage and in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. In 1783 a series of six of Pringle’s discourses at the annual presentations of the Copley medal was published in one volume.

The winning of the battle against scurvy was one of the most important achievements in the general field of exploration. It made possible the major voyages that followed. As Robert Hughes so aptly put it in The Fatal Shore: ‘malt juice and pickled cabbage put Europeans in Australia as microchip circuitry would put Americans on the moon...’.

Beddie, 1290; Holmes, 20; Kroepelien, 1065; Norman sale, 378; Streeter (Sr.) sale, 2410. 32 MARC ETHERINGTON 33 First Contact [Triptych] Endeavour #1, “Discovering” Australia, Endeavour #2], 2020

Marc Etherington Marc Etherington’s work rings with emotional truth. His paintings First Contact [Triptych – Endeavour have always held a touching immediacy that comes from an unguarded #1, “Discovering” Australia, and authentic approach to art-making. Etherington often engages Endeavour #2], 2020 audiences with light-hearted playfulness, but where the end result is usually humorous, in this new triptych he strikes a more sombre tone. acrylic on board, found frames 17 x 31.5 cm, 18 x 22 cm, 17 x 13.5 cm Etherington’s hope is that Australian’s dig deeper into the truths $5,500 surrounding the discovery of Australia. This work suggests a play in 3 acts; a hopeful journey, a violent encounter, and a return under dark clouds and a blood-red sea. Cause and effect. A boiling down of a complex narrative to an emotional truth.

I think making these works made me feel even more empathy for how it must’ve felt being an indigenous Australian living in your home country and having a ship full of men with guns show up on the beach and basically say “This is our country now”. The past seems to be whitewashed and sanitised to try and erase the horrors which have occurred to the Indigenous people of Australia.

— Marc Etherington, 2020

Etherington’s works often take pop culture, childhood memories and everyday domestic life as their subject matter, rendering them through a darkly humorous and sometimes absurd lens. Self-taught, Etherington has maintained a consistent practice in painting and small sculpture for over a decade and more recently has worked with larger-scale sculptural installations and ceramics. Etherington has become a crowd favourite at the Archibald, Wynne and Sulman prizes over the last 5 years, firmly establishing his place in the Australian art landscape. 34 ROBERT MALHERBE 35 Cook Gazes Towards Shore Missing Elizabeth, 2020

Robert Malherbe Robert Malherbe was born in Mauritius before he migrated with Cook Gazes Towards Shore Missing his family to Australia at age six. Having initially studied animation, Elizabeth, 2020 Malherbe is largely a self-taught painter who has keenly observed and taken inspiration from masterworks around the globe. oil on linen 61 x 51 cm Looking closely at the relationship between his subjects, himself, and $6,200 his audience, Malherbe notes that all portraits are to some degree self- portraits. It is for this reason that he sought a closer view of James Cook before painting his portrait. Like many, Malherbe was taught the myth of “Captain Cook, The Discoverer”, thus in re-creating his portrait Malherbe sought to find Cook’s strengths and flaws away from the British imperial apparatus.

Thomas Keneally in his book “The Australians” writes that Cook would have been “a shocking apparition to the Eora people of Botany Bay” and describes him as an aloof man “impermeable to disabling doubt, immutable of faith, unapologetic of skill” but also a man who adored his wife, Elizabeth.

I have an image of a driven man, a fair but strict commander, battling loneliness and ill-health while brilliantly navigating using lunar distances and the stars. The pressures, I imagine, were immense. In his voyages away from England, he successfully avoided “The afflictions of Venus.” (V. D.) by resisting the temptations of the native women and staying faithful to his wife. During a 17 year marriage, he was at sea for the total of 13 years. He made up for it in the 4 years spent at home with Elizabeth, fathering six children. Elizabeth, by all accounts a force of nature, outlived James and their children, 36 37

passing away in 1835 at the extraordinary age of 94. Little is known of Cook as a passionate husband and loving father, but his many letters to Elizabeth must have been intimate and intensely ardent to warrant her, the constant champion of James’s legacy and historical importance, to destroy them before dying.

— Robert Malherbe, 2020 38 JOSEPH Mc GLENNON 39 Ghost Ship, 2020

Joseph McGlennon Joseph McGlennon’s photographic works are majestic recreations of Ghost Ship, 2020 animals in their natural habitats, often drawing from the deep well that giclee Digital Print on archival is Australia’s early history of settlement and the introduction of the Hahnemuhle Fine Art Paper species.

edition of 8 + 2 AP There is an excerpt from the Cook journals that has always captured 90 x 120 cm McGlennon’s imagination and has served as this inspiration for Ghost $5,000 unframed Ship. The story originated with Joseph Banks, botanist on Captain Cook’s 1770 voyage. edition of 8 + 2 AP 120 x 156 cm When the Endeavour arrived at the coast of Australia the Aboriginal $7,000 unframed people completely ignored it, possibly because the huge ship was so alien to their experience that they literally failed to ‘see’ it. Sailing into what is now known as Botany Bay, Banks records that the Endeavour passed four ‘Indian canoes’, with a man spearing fish from each. He writes: The ship passed within a quarter of a mile of them and yet they scarce lifted their eyes from their employment; I was almost inclined to think that attentive to their business and deafened by the noise of the surf they neither saw or heard her [the Endeavour] go past them.

Not one was once observed to stop and look towards the ship; they pursued their way in all appearance entirely unmoved by the neighbourhood of so remarkable an object as a ship must necessarily be to people who have never seen one.

— Joseph Banks, HM Bark Endeavour Journal dated 28 April 1770 40 41

McGlennon takes hundreds of different photographs and spends weeks layering and arranging them to arrive at the final image. The landscape is as important as the animal itself – there are no blurred backgrounds or subdued foregrounds in McGlennon’s collages. The inclusion of every detail creates a hyper- real effect that pulls the viewer into contact with the flora and fauna within.

In this work, the Artist imagines the silent entrance of a Ghost Ship, its foreboding arrival under the watchful gaze of the Sea Eagle. 42 NATHANIEL DANCE 43 ENGRAVED BY JOHN KEYES SHERWIN The first and most familiar image of Captain Cook: Its very first printing, 1779

[Captain James Cook]. A proof impression (before title, date and some letters) of the first Engraving, artist’s proof copy issue of the first separately published engraving of Captain Cook. 275 x 235 mm, mounted and framed. This famous portrait of the navigator was published in the year of London, J K Sherwin, circa 1779. his death, though news of the events at Kealakekua Bay did not reach Very first proof copy of first Europe until the following year. Now the trademark image of Cook as a separately issued portrait of Cook. result of its very many subsequent versions (Beddie lists an astonishing $9500 284 entries for the Dance group), it was considered the best likeness at the time and is known, for example, to have been distributed to friends by his widow Elizabeth. It is a conspicuously rare portrait in this first version. The engraving is based on Nathaniel Dance’s original portrait, commissioned by Joseph Banks, for which Cook sat for Dance in 1776, before sailing on his third voyage. The painting is today in the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich. Dance, one of the greatest of British history painters and a founding member of the Royal Academy, shows Cook wearing captain’s full-dress uniform and holding his own chart of the Southern Ocean: the caption “New Holland” can clearly be discerned in the engraving.

This extremely rare proof was pulled before the image had been titled and dated, and before the usual pinxit and sculpsit notes had been added to the artists’ names; this state corresponds with an example in the Mitchell Library (where it is item 3 in an 18th-century connoisseur’s album entitled “Three voyages round the world”), while a subsequent state with the addition of the title is held in the Dixson Library (Beddie 3379). An earlier less developed form where the shape of Cook’s body has been simply blocked out is held by the National Library (Rex Nan Kivell Collection NK10914/A and /B).

Beddie, 3378. 44 45 46 JORDAN RICHARDSON 47 Captain James Cook, Discoverer of New Lands / Captain James Cook, Destroyer of Peoples [Diptych], 2020

Jordan Richardson Jordan Richardson’s paintings take breath from an observation of Captain James Cook, Discoverer of art conservation. The material quality of old paint, its tackiness and New Lands / Captain James Cook, elasticity is a daily obsession that drives his painting practice and Destroyer of Peoples [diptych], 2020 informs a strategy for paint application.

oil on linen When first invited to participate inNavigating Cook, Richardson 50 x 40cm each immediately thought of painting two contrasting portraits. One $7,700 framed (for the pair) depicting an idolised Cook who is heroic and good; the other a figure of evil and villainy. After considering the idea of two contrasting portraits Richardson realised that no matter how Cook was perceived his physical likeness was fixed. The monster or the saint must live within the shell of his image proscribed image; the ubiquitous face of Dance’s 1775 portrait.

As such, the Artist presents two very similar portraits of Cook to highlight the multiple interpretations we can have from the same piece of information. We are encouraged to search for variation between the Discoverer and the Destroyer. What sets them apart? What unites them? In attempting to duplicate his own portrait Richardson suggests that there are in fact, multiple possible mythologies for Cook.

I think Cook’s personal legacy and mythology have strayed from reality. He has become iconic, and now that he has become a symbol there is no real truth. Cook has been a vague figure; the myth is larger than the man. When someone’s life becomes myth they lose ownership of it.

After making this work I think that Cook sits somewhere between the extremes suggested in my title. I think our perception of Cook today can shape the past, or at least the way we read it.

— Jordan Richardson, 2020 48 49

One of the earliest examples of general mourning for The official Royal Society memorial medal for Cook: Major events were often commemorated in the eighteenth century by the Cook’s death in Hawaii the rarer silver issue creation of actual objects. Some – like the “Courage and Perseverance” medal - would have been sold on the street and often, since they were made of base Contemporary medal “Capt. James Cook: Courage PINGO, Lewis. metal, soon discarded and therefore extremely rare today, while others - like that and Perseverance”. issued by the Royal Society to mark Cook’s death - were of a grander nature and The Royal Society Medal, in commemoration of material and meant to last. Bronze medal, 37 mm. London, circa 1780. Captain Cook. Silver issue. Obverse: Uniformed bust of Exceptionally rare medal, an early commemoration of James Cook. Reverse: Fortune leaning upon a column, The “Courage and Perseverance” medal was struck soon after news of Cook’s Cook’s death . holding a rudder on a globe. death reached England, but before any detailed description of events was $12,000 available. This, and the similar and equally rare “Kill’d by the Indians at O’why’hee” Silver medal, 43 mm. diameter; relief bust of Captain medal, are the earliest artefacts made in commemoration of Cook’s death. Cook on recto, full-length relief portrait of Fortune The commissioning of the Royal Society silver medal: the formal memorial to leaning on a column while resting her hand upon a Cook was due above all else to the efforts of Sir Joseph Banks, who supervised rudder and globe on verso. London, Royal Society, ‘the minting and distribution of the Royal Society Cook medal as a personal task 1784. coincident with the publication of the narrative of the tragic third voyage’ (H.B. Carter, Sir Joseph Banks, 1988, p. 168). Silver and gold issues were available One of 322 silver specimens by subscription only; some were reserved for presentation. Cook’s European $7850 reputation is borne out by several letters to Banks requesting specimens of the medal, including one from the great French navigator Louis de Bougainville, who wrote in June 1785 to remind Banks that as a member since 1756 he felt entitled to one. 50 JOAN ROSS 51 View of New Holland, 1770, 2020

Joan Ross ‘Captain cook stole the chook View of New Holland, 1770, 2020 And claimed it as his own’

hand painted digital collage The only thing James Cook discovered was that ‘Australia’ was Edition of 8 + 2 AP already occupied. 57 x 80 cm $4,400 unframed — Joan Ross, 2020 52 JOAN ROSS 53 View of New Holland, 1770, 2020 cont.

Companion work The Lycett Album: Drawings of Aborigines and the Australian Scenery Thomas Watling, we see that Lycett used ideas from all of these artists in the / with commentary by Jeanette Hoorn, [Canberra], National Library of construction of his pictures. Lycett, Joseph, (circa. 1775-1828): Australia, vii, 30 pages, 20 pages of plates: illustrations, 1990. Drawings of the natives & scenery of One of the features that distinguishes Ross’s work from that of other Van Diemens Land, 1830, Joseph Lycett (circa. 1775-1828) was convicted of forgery and contemporary artists working in Australia in the new millennium, is her ability to The Lycett Album transported to Australia in 1814. During the period, he spent in the plunder our rich colonial past to create artworks of wit, lyricism and poignancy colony Lycett recorded many aspects of the life and landscape of – all with a strong visual and political punch. In A view of New Holland, 2020, Plate 8 entitled; Australia. The 1820’s Lycett Album of watercolour sketches, contains Ross appropriates two Lycett watercolours, “Aborigines Feeding from Beached “Aborigines Feeding from Beached one of the few depictions of works which document the life and use of Whales” and “Aborigines with Spears Attacking Europeans in a Rowing Boat” Whales”, R5680 the land by Aboriginal people in the early colonial period. circa 1820 to demonstrate that Captain Cook uncovered to European eyes, a continent inhabited and peoples industrious. Plate 15 entitled; “Aborigines with In the works contained in Lycett’s early 19th-century album, we see a Spears Attacking Europeans in a return to an earlier mode of depicting Aborigines in control of the land; Captain Cook’s gateway exploration and the failure by subsequent European Rowing Boat”, R5688 they are also seen in conflict with Europeans, a subject that Lewin, officials and settlers, to understand Indigenous land use – as witnessed by early Evans and Eyre avoided. Aboriginal people occupy centre stage in colonial artists- ultimately lead to the legal misstep of Governor Bourke’s 1835 Lycett’s compositions; restored to their former place, they no longer implemented The Proclamation. A proclamation of a doctrine of Terra Nullius have the status of ‘other’. Yet Lycett’s pictures describe a situation upon which British settlement was based, reinforcing the notion that the land which was disappearing. By the second decade of the nineteenth belonged to no one prior to the British Crown taking possession of it. Aboriginal century, the Aborigines of the New South Wales coast were rapidly people therefore could not sell or assign the land, nor could an individual person being alienated from their land by Europeans. The sketches were acquire it, other than through distribution by the Crown. executed by the artist in the early 1820s. Lycett recorded Terra Nullius to be untrue. Ross, through Lycett knows One of the features that distinguishes Lycett’s work from that fundamentally it was never true and wrong. of other colonial artists working in Australia in the first decades of European settlement is his diversity of style - the result of his frequent appropriation of elements from the work of other artists. If we compare Lycett’s work with that of George Evans, the surveyor, John Lewin, the ornithological draughtsman, John Heaviside Clark or 54 J. CHEEVERS, AFTER CAPTAIN JAMES COOK 55 First published mapping of the Queensland coast, including the Endeavour River, 1770

By lieut. J. Cook, 1770. The earliest published charting of the coast of Queensland, Chart of part of the coast of new commemorating one of the most memorable passages of the south wales, from cape tribulation Endeavour voyage. Prepared by Cook himself and published in to endeavour straits. Hawkesworth’s official account of the first voyage, it details the tracks and anchorages as the expedition sailed north along the coastline in Engraved map, 325 x 360 mm; 1770. mounted London, 1773. $2850 Far North Queensland was a difficult passage for theEndeavour of course: the ship ran aground on a shoal near the Hope Isles and required numerous repairs at Endeavour River. Cook’s chart shows the exact spot of the reef where the ship went aground, as well as “Endeavour River, where we beached the ship”. The track to Cape York, including the passage through Providential Channel, is marked.

Beddie, 860; David et al, Charts and Coastal Views, 1.304A. 56 ROBERT BENARD AFTER JAMES COOK 57 The entire east coast of Australia: A French version of the great chart, 1774

Benard, Robert after James Cook. Perhaps Cook’s most famous chart, here in its first French version, prepared for the French language edition of the official account of the Carte de la nlle. Galles meridle. Endeavour voyage. Ou de la côte orientale de la nlle. Hollande découverte et visitée par le The magnificent sweep of the east coast of Australia from Point Hicks lieutenant j. Cook... to Cape York is testament to Cook’s extraordinary achievement on the first voyage. Two contemporary English engraved versions are Engraved map, 370 x 785 mm.; recorded by David, the version published in Hawkesworth’s official original folds; mounted. account and another, upright in shape, that appears only in Wales’ Paris, Saillant et Nyon, 1774. Astronomical Observations (1788). This French version is not recorded Point Hicks to Cape York by David. $2200 Beddie, 860 (English edition); David et al, Charts and Coastal Views, 1.270A (English original). 58 TREVOR SMITH 59 Captain James Cook (Bust), 2020

Trevor Smith A talented artist and curator Trevor Smith has become known for Captain James Cook (Bust), 2020 his unique crochet sculptures. Having learnt from and shadowed his mother, a skilled craftswoman, Smith’s work reveals a lot about the crochet wool, polystyrene, foamcor passing of knowledge and human relationships. From retro-domestic 50 x 42 x 42 cm appliances, classic cakes and feasts from the 50s, 60s and 70s, to iconic $1,800 takes on Queen Victoria, Frida Kahlo and Dame Edna Everage, Smith weaves together histories and places them in the now.

Smith’s crocheted bust of Captain Cook embraces the iconic figure through a contemporary lens. His perception of Cook shifted several decades ago as the effect of his presence and impact on First Nations people was talked about more often. This new work was created with the understanding that there are different sides to every story.

In 1970, the last time there was a national focus on James Cook I was an eight-year-old in primary school. We were taught of what a great man he was, revered for his exploration work. We were not taught about the true impact on the Indigenous people. I now look at him very differently. We can’t change history, but we can look at it from alternative perspectives and in different ways.

— Trevor Smith, 2020

62 DR. CHRISTIAN THOMPSON 63

Dr Christian Thompson AO Dr Christian Thompson AO is an Australian born contemporary artist Ship of Dreams (Imperial Relic), 2015 whose work explores notions of identity, cultural hybridity and history. C-type print on metallic paper Formally trained as a sculptor, Thompson’s multidisciplinary practice 100 x 100 cm engages mediums such as photography, video, sculpture, performance Artist Proof 1 of an edition of 6 +2 AP and sound. His work focuses on the exploration of identity, sexuality, Final Available Edition gender, race and memory. In his live performances and conceptual $11,500 framed portraits he inhabits a range of personas achieved through handcrafted costumes and carefully orchestrated poses and backdrops.

Dr Christian Thompson AO In 2010 Thompson made history when he became the first Aboriginal [Title TBC - New Work], 2020 Australian to be admitted into the University of Oxford in its 900-year history. He is currently a research affiliate at the Pitt Rivers Museum, C-type print on metallic paper University of Oxford. Thompson holds a Doctorate of Philosophy (Fine 120 x 120 cm Art), Trinity College, University of Oxford, United Kingdom, Master edition of 6 +2 AP of Theatre, Amsterdam School of Arts, Das Arts, The Netherlands, $12,500, unframed Masters of Fine Art (Sculpture) RMIT University and Honours $14,000, framed with non-reflective glass (Sculpture) RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia and a Bachelor of Fine Art from the University of Southern Queensland, Australia. In 2018 he was awarded an Officer of the Order of Australia for distinguished Dr Christian Thompson AO service to the visual arts as a sculptor, photographer, video and Subconscious Whispers, 2018 performance artist, and as a role model for young Indigenous artists. C-type print on Fuji Pearl Metallic Paper Comprising four panels: 120 x 120 cm (each) Total framed dimensions: 250 x 250 cm edition of 4 + 2 AP $45,000, unframed $50,000, framed with non-reflective glass Final Edition Available 64 WAYNE YOULE 65 Things were going swimmingly until..., 2020

Wayne Youle Wayne Youle has always gravitated towards the rumours and the tall Things were going swimmingly tails that attach to the mythology of a person. This interest has seen until…, 2020 him continually return to Captain Cook as a subject throughout the last two decades. powder coated laser cut aluminium 238.5 x 166 cm Youle’s perception and opinion of Cook changes every time he reads $20,000 more, sees more and hears more about the man and his journeys. For this show, Youle has focused on Cook’s relationship to Australia. By looking at the actual words from Cook’s diary on the day he finally stepped foot on Aboriginal land, Youle explores the language of Cook.

The bluntness, naivety and entitled tone is strange and disturbing to me. The argument that it is a language and mentality of the time holds a lot less weight with me personally. In this work Cook plays the uninvited guest, as the title suggests things were going swimmingly until...

In this work, Youle has taken inspiration from Captain Cook’s diary and matched the words with related symbols and shapes that reflect Youle’s own translation. The silhouettes tell the visual story of the day in 1770 when Cook and the Endeavour made first contact with the Gweagal people. Withing the work, Youle has deconstructed the Union Jack, using its base units as the narrative building blocks. The image of the Endeavour with full sails is taken straight from the 50c piece (New Zealand currency). The musket is an exact tracing of what is said to be Cook’s actual musket and the sextant was one of the many tools that helped him “find his way”. The skeleton is a symbol of the end result. The skeleton wears a paper hat, a sailors hat. The arrow is almost 66 67

comical and refers to the only items of apparent significance on first meeting (the fishing spears) and the incongruous retaliation of Cook towards the use of “sticks and stones”. The muscat blasts. The rest is history.

By providing a visual narrative, Youle offers a way of retelling history, distilling its elements into a new order. This translation from written word to silhouette and symbol encourages a recalibration of the narrative as told by Cook.

Born in Wellington, New Zealand, Wayne Youle’s diverse practice is underpinned by his bicultural heritage (Nga Puhi, Ngati Whakaeke, Ngati Pakeha) and background studies in design. Working comfortably across a wide variety of media, Youle’s works in collage, painting, mural or sculpture, reflect a fascination with the visual language of popular culture, and a questioning of how history and identity are written. 68 PAUL NABULUMO NAMARINJMAK 69 Djung, 2018 Ngalyod at Kubumi, 2019

Paul Nabulumo Namarinjmak Kuninjku artist Paul Nabulumo, born in 1971, is the son of acclaimed Djung, 2018 artist, Mick Kubarkku (1925 – 2008). Kubarkku was known for his ochre pigment on stringybark painting of the moon, sun and stars which reference the djang site 178 x 49 cm Dirdbim on his country. Nabulumo has continued to paint this iconic $6,100 inc bracket imagery handed down from his father. Other common subjects of his work are the interconnecting waterholes at Kubumi, Ngalyod (rainbow serpent), mimih and yawkyawk spirits.

Paul Nabulumo Namarinjmak Elements of his father’s expression remain in Nabulumo’s work and Ngalyod at Kubumi, 2019 can be seen particularly in the faces of his mimih and yawkyawk spirit carvings and paintings. ochre pigment on stringybark 290 x 22 cm Nabulumo however has developed his own aesthetic. There is an $15,500 inc. stand elegance to his rarrk and thoughtful tonality to his palette that is his (Wynne Prize entry for 2020) own. Nabulumo’s use of black heavily contrasts the fine rarrk within his designs, creating a visually arresting rhythm with his paintings.

In Nabulumo’s bark painting shown here, the bones “Djulng’’ are the bones of the first ancestors beings in their human and spiritual forms. There are several djulng sites on Kuninjku country where bones rest in rock shelters.

In the large Lorrkon, Nabulumo depicts two Ngalyod at the site Kubumi on Kulmarru clan country. Ngalyod is female generative being associated with the storms and the tempestuous weather of the wet season. Kubumi is a series of deep waterholes that are exposed when the Mann River retreats in the Dry Season. They are connected by underground tunnels that Ngalyod created and where she rests today. 70 71

The site is owned jointly by the Kurulk, Kulmarru and Bordoh clans.

The two figures run the length of this impressive work, never meeting. The viewer must move around Nabulumo’s work to explore the relationship between the figures. In this work the artists depicts Ngalyod’s forked tongue, sharp teeth, amorphous body and fin-like tail, referencing the freshwater bodies in which she inhabits and guards.

When appreciating these works, it is important to reflect on the achievement of Kuninjku people who have maintained their cultural systems and language despite sustained waves colonisation. It is often taken for granted, but the continuity of Kuninjku Law and culture is an extraordinary feat and still something people fight for every day in the face of government policies that erode agency and undermine basic human rights, and sustained social and economic pressures. The knowledge embedded in Nabulumo’s work is complex and enduring, and should be known and valued by the nation.

Perhaps most interestingly, many remote Indigenous communities are largely unaware or unconcerned with the 250th Anniversary of Captain Cook’s landing, with other periods of non-Indigenous contact, including the Macassans and later European arrivals, being more relevant to their lives. 72 NATHANIEL DANCE 73 (ENGRAVED BY F. BARTOLOZZI) Omai, A Native of Ulaietea, 1774

Dance, Nathaniel, A wonderful full-length portrait of Omai (also known as “Mai”), the Engraved By F. Bartolozzi. Tahitian who was seen as an outstanding example of Rousseau’s noble Omai, A Native Of Ulaietea. savage when he arrived in England on the Adventure with Captain Furneaux on the return to England of Cook’s second voyage in 1774. etching and stipple engraving, 540 x 330 mm.; framed. The portrait is based on the painting by Nathaniel Dance, who would London, Publish’d according to later also paint Captain Cook. Omai is shown carrying the wooden Act of Parlt., 25th October 1774. pillow-stool now in the Musée de Tahiti et des Iles. With a feathered $11,500 circlet and draped in tapa cloth and with tattooed hands he embodies the beauty of the newly discovered Pacific islanders.

Dance’s portrait is the best known of the several images of the famous Tahitian, who was placed in the care of Joseph Banks and Dr Solander when he arrived in England, both of whom he remembered from their visit to Tahiti five years earlier on Cook’s first voyage. His natural grace captivated London society. This romantic portrait was one of the first of the large-scale and separately issued images produced to satisfy European curiosity and anthropological interest in the peoples of the Pacific. There was a tradition, so terribly questionable to us today, of taking exotic natives of interest back to Europe: there they invariably went on display. The tradition really took hold with the voyagers of the second half of the eighteenth century, most famously with Bougainville and Cook (though nearly a hundred years earlier Dampier had taken Giolo, the “Painted Prince”, back to England with him) and continued well into the nineteenth century.

Beddie, 4569; Nan Kivell and Spence, p. 238 (illustrated, p. 75). 74 DEREK HENDERSON 75 Untitled, 2020

Derek Henderson Having spent twenty years living and working in New York, London and Untitled, 2020 Los Angeles, Derek Henderson is a celebrated practitioner in both Australia and New Zealand. His portfolio is diverse, from expansive analogue c-type on Hahnemuhle landscapes, luring portraiture, to fashion photography that has graced photo rag the covers of Vogue, Henderson has become known for his clean and 40 x 50 cm detailed imagery. His versatile approach renders his human subjects edition of 3 + 1 AP open and vulnerable, while his depictions of landscape and still life $2,800 unframed contain an air of distance and nostalgia. $3,900 framed His independent bodies of work often connect back to his New Zealand roots, capturing Maori teenagers, the Waitoa Slaughter House and his mother’s hometown of Mercer. It is through these versatile works that Henderson casts light on the natural landscape and its social makeup. Henderson has touched on the omnipresence of colonial impact on the pacific experience through bodies of work suchParadise Lost, 2014.

I have done this work in the style of what I think still life photography would have been like if there had been photography in 1769. It is a depiction of what happened on the first few days that Cook and his crew had contact with the local Maori people of New Zealand. It was a disastrous encounter for Maori, on the first two occasions Maori lost their lives when Cooks men fired upon them.

It was the age of discovery for Europeans so they claimed those lands for their own, with disregard to the local populations.

It’s an incredibly complicated situation, but I think it has and still is affecting the people whose lands were taken from them in the name of imperialism. I think we need programs in place to right these wrongs, Indigenous People all around the world should be supported and respected citizens of their own countries.

— Derek Henderson, 2020 76 REW HANKS 77 Banks, Which one is Mine?, 2013

Rew Hanks In Banks, Which one is Mine? we quickly recognise the faces of both Banks, Which one is Mine?, 2013 Captain Cook and Joseph Banks. Both men wear the unamused- expressions by which we have learned to identify ‘great men’, but what linocut are they doing with golf clubs? And then the details start to register— 102 x 75 cm cane toads abound around their feet, one couple even fornicating; St editions of 30 Andrews clubhouse, mecca of contemporary golf, nestles gracefully in $2,000 unframed the middle distance; kangaroos forage on the course; and cattle graze $2,800 framed near a windmill behind a picket fence.

This is bizarre, but as a smile forms on the viewer’s face, so also does a question start to present itself about the story here. Based on a well-known golfing image, L.F. Abbott’s (1790)The Blackheath Golfer which became the first golfing poster produced, it depicts a dandified gentleman out for a game of golf attended by his manservant carrying a bundle of clubs. The original image contains a grand country house, the windmill and the picket fence. Hanks reproduces the composition exactly but maps Cook’s face (the one familiar from our history books, Nathaniel Dance’s 1775 portrait) on to the golfing dandy and the equally recognisable image of Banks’ face (from Joshua Reynolds’ 1773 portrait) on to his manservant. The grand country house becomes St Andrews and other smaller details are added to invite closer inspection—note Cook’s belt-buckle.

— Elin Howe 78 REW HANKS 79 Surfing the Bombora, 2013

Rew Hanks Surfing the Bombora puts sporting culture firmly within its sights. In Surfing the Bombora, 2013 this image, Hanks focuses his critical gaze on macho surfing culture— we see a wooden and graceless Cook, improbably staying upright on his linocut board as he surfs a bombora, accompanied by the ubiquitous cane toad. 102 x 75 cm editions of 30 Bombora is originally an indigenous term for large sea waves which $2,000 unframed break over a submerged reef or sand bar, but it has been subsumed $2,800 framed into contemporary surfing language and abbreviated as ‘bommie’. Because of the obvious danger, riding a bommie confers immediate hero status on the surfer. And right on cue there is a bevy of Hawaiian maidens watching this hero admiringly from the shore. But wait, behind them is the Botany Bay Hotel. Something is wrong. There are never waves, and certainly not bomboras, in Botany Bay—it’s a flat enclosed stretch of water. Despite this improbability, Surfer Cook has absolutely absorbed the ethos of macho surfing culture—he puts surfing before all and neglects his duty to record the transit of Venus, happening above in a murderous-looking sky; and he becomes an instant exhibitionist, showing off in front of the beach maidens and drinkers on the pub verandah. He’s also neglecting Botticelli’s Venus (art), as she waits patiently for him in his transit-of-Venus tent.

Other details lurk, waiting to be discovered: Brett Whiteley’s famous matchstick sculptures in the background symbolically interred within a funereal iron fence; Ned Kelly, mingling on the verandah with other pub patrons; and Cook is (impossibly) wearing the beautifully embroidered, but unfinished, waistcoat his wife Elizabeth was making for him at the time of his death. Incommensurable notions clash, but despite this, Hanks’ witty critique of the privileging of sport over art and the problematic relationship between sport and alcohol in Australian culture is clear.

— Elin Howe 80 REW HANKS 81 STOP! There’s No Need to Shoot the Natives, 2013

Rew Hanks Each of Hanks’ images is replete with iconoclastic stories—his larger STOP! There’s No Need to Shoot the prints engage with both history and sport. We have Cook admonishing Natives, 2013 his crew as they are about to indulge their hunting impulse. In this image, Stop! There’s no Need to Shoot the Natives, Hanks engages with linocut both the iconic 1902 image of Cook’s arrival by Emanuel Phillips Fox, 102 x 75 cm The landing of Captain Cook at Botany Bay, 1770 and a more recent editions of 30 2006 postcolonial interpretation by Daniel Boyd, We Call Them Pirates $2,000 unframed Out Here, which presents an Indigenous perspective. $2,800 framed — Elin Howe 82 REW HANKS 83 Cook’s Curios, 2013

Rew Hanks Despite his apparently irreverent approach to Official History, Hanks Cook’s Curios, 2013 is well aware of the history of representation and pays it diligent attention. He has particularly steeped himself in eighteenth-century 51 x 42 cm Anglo-European visual culture with a view to mobilising its tropes. linocut $1,000 unframed There are two obvious sources for Hanks’ style and both played a $1,400 framed significant part in constructing the visual history of the period. In this pre-photographic era, prints were the medium used to reproduce visual information, especially about the New World - original paintings and drawings were copied and interpreted by the print-maker to be reproduced in the illustrated atlases and natural history books popular at the time.

Hanks’ other source is the cabinet of curiosity, an item of furniture which became de rigueur for any serious collector of New World paraphernalia - exotic botanical specimens sat alongside indigenous cultural artefacts in an eclectic display. Eventually this imagery was incorporated into, and became familiar as Australian history.

Hanks, understanding his audience’s relationship with the historical illustrative print, has developed a distinctive authentic-looking ‘eighteenth-century’ idiom with which to problematise our established history while, at the same time commenting on contemporary cultural issues. The eclectic aesthetics of the cabinet of curiosity are also applied to his own image-making resulting in a delightfully amusing leakage of meaning across temporal and knowledge boundaries—the nineteenth and twenty-first centuries merge and Official History and Popular Culture collide. We soon become aware of a savvy contemporary commentator at work.

— Elin Howe 84 JAMES MAGRA 85 The very first printed description of the Endeavour voyage: first edition, first issue, 1771

Magra, James, attributed. First edition of the earliest published account of Cook’s first voyage to A journal of a voyage round the world the Pacific: the rare first issue, with the leaf of dedication to ‘The Right in his majesty’s ship endeavour, in Honourable Lords of the Admiralty, and to Mr. Banks and Dr. Solander’ the years 1768, 1769, 1770 and 1771; inserted to add authenticity. Legal action mounted against the undertaken in pursuit of natural publisher forced removal of the leaf during publication. ‘It is accordingly knowledge, at the desire of the of the greatest rarity, and copies of the book containing the dedication royal society: containing all the are far more valuable than those without it...’ (Davidson). In this copy, various occurrences of the voyage, the offending leaf is unusually large, retaining its printed instruction to with descriptions of several new the binder ‘Place this next the title’ (which also, interestingly, indicates discovered countries in the southern that the leaf was printed quite separately from the rest of the work). hemisphere; and accounts of their soil and productions; and of many This was the first of a series of so-called “surreptitious accounts” singularities in the structure, of Cook’s various voyages to appear in print: the Admiralty found apparel, customs, manners, it practically impossible to enforce their ruling that no unofficial policy, manufactures, &c. Of their publications should pre- empt the official and lengthier accounts of the inhabitants. voyages, naturally slower in the press. Published anonymously some two months after the return of Endeavour and nearly two years before Quarto; a good copy in modern Hawkesworth’s official account, the great Cook scholar Beaglehole has quarter calf and marbled boards by demonstrated that the likeliest author was American sailor James Sangorski and Sutcliffe. Magra, a New Yorker and a loyalist.

London, Becket and De Hondt, 1771. Cook thought Magra ‘one of those gentlemen, frequently found on $48,500 board Kings Ships, that can very well be spared, or to speake more planer good for nothing...’., but if he was indeed the author it was he that got the first description of the voyage into print - and incidentally the earliest printed account of the east coast of Australia, published even before acceptance of the name Botany Bay, here called Sting-ray Bay as Cook originally christened it. Subsequently changing his name 86 87

to Matra to ease his inheritance of a Corsican estate, he became an enthusiastic promoter of the mooted convict colony at Botany Bay, producing various schemes for government and testifying to the House of Commons committee enquiring into the resumption of transportation in May 1785, as one of the few Europeans then alive who had actually visited New South Wales.

Bagnall, 3324; Beaglehole, I, pp. cclvi-cclxiv; Beddie, 693; Davidson, ‘A Book Collector’s Notes’, pp. 53-4; Hill, 1066 (but recording second issue only); Hocken, p. 9; Holmes, 3; O’Reilly-Reitman, 36 88 JOHN HAWKESWORTH 89 The Official Narrative of the Endeavour Voyage: The best original edition, 1773

Hawkesworth, John. Second and best edition of the official account of the Endeavour voyage, An account of the voyages during which Cook discovered and charted the entire east coast of Australia, undertaken by the order of his naming it New South Wales. This, the version of the voyage sanctioned present majesty for making by the Admiralty, is both elegant and substantial. It is the first full-dress discoveries in the southern narrative and illustration of this extraordinary voyage, and consequently hemisphere... has the greatest significance for any collection of Australiana or of voyages, telling the fascinating story, including the various moments of early contact, Three volumes, quarto, with a total and the great characters such as Joseph Banks or the Tahitian priest of 52 maps, views and plates (many Tupaia. The plates, charts and views are magnificent, and most famously folding), in contemporary speckled include the first astonishing engraving of a kangaroo, charts of New Zealand calf, very well rebacked preserving and the east coast of Australia, and the moving depiction of the Endeavour, old title and numbering labels, a hauled on shore just north of Cape Tribulation on the north Queensland handsome set with quarter morocco coast to fix the hole that nearly sent them to the bottom. boxes. The collection sets the scene for the Cook narrative by including in the first London, W. Strahan & T. Cadell, 1773. volume the official narratives of the voyages of Byron, Wallis and Carteret; $15,500 the compendium thus contains the cream of eighteenth-century English exploration in the Pacific. The Cook narrative, which occupies the whole of the second and third volumes, was edited from Cook’s journals by the professional writer John Hawkesworth. Cook himself was in the middle of his second voyage when it was finally published in London to widespread enthusiasm on 9 June 1773 (at that exact moment Cook was in Cook Strait, New Zealand, having just left Queen Charlotte Sound).

This attractive set is a good example of the second and best (because most complete) edition: as well as the chart of the Strait of Magellan and the List of Plates, missing in many copies of the first edition, it contains additional preliminary material in the form of a new preface in which Hawkesworth replies to the charges of poor editing made against him by Dalrymple.

Beddie, 650; Borba de Moraes, p.395; Hill, 783; Holmes, 5(n); Kroepelien, 535(n). 90 91 92 SIR JOSEPH BANKS & DR. DANIEL SOLANDER 93 Banks’ Florilegium, 1986 - 1989

BANKS, Sir Joseph and Dr Daniel One of the finest botanical productions of all time: the first complete Museum in London. Joseph Banks, although he had intended to publish them SOLANDER. edition of the full set of engravings from the original plates after never fulfilled his ambition. Banks’ Florilegium. Sydney Parkinson, Frederick Polydore Nodder, John Frederick Miller, [A Selection only exhibited at Michael James Miller, John Cleveley and Thomas Burgis. Banks’ Florilegium This complete set is offered on behalf of Alecto Historical Editions United Reid Sydney] comprises an astonishing 743 botanical engravings (each approximately Kingdom: it is one of the hors commerce sets retained by the publishers. 72 x 56 cms) of plants collected by Sir Joseph Banks and Dr Daniel Accompanying the 35 parts is the original catalogue quarter-bound in leather, 743 engravings of plants collected Solander in Maderia, Brazil, Tierra del Fuego, the Society Islands, New containing seven plates in sepia. The engravings were printed for the first time by Sir Joseph Banks and Dr Daniel Zealand, Australia and Java on Captain Cook’s first voyage round the in colour between 1980 and 1990 when the Natural History Museum and Alecto Solander. Printed in colours à world in His Majesty’s Bark Endeavour, 1768–1771. Historical Editions published what was to become the largest la poupée from the original 18th printing project of the twentieth century. century copper plates with five On his return to London in 1771, Banks determined to publish a grand Alecto’s initial intention was to print in black, but experiments by the Master supplementary plates engraved scientific record of his botanical collection. Over thirteen years, while Printer, Edward Egerton-Williams showed that superb results could be achieved between 1986 and 1989. Published in Daniel Solander prepared the accompanying botanical texts, Banks by printing in colour à la poupée. To ensure that each coloured print was thirty-five Parts by Alecto Historical employed five artists to complete the field sketches drawn on board botanically accurate, all colours were agreed and approved by the Botanical Editions in association with the ship from the fresh specimens by Sydney Parkinson, and eighteen Editor at the Natural History Museum, with careful reference to the original British Museum (Natural History) engravers to create exquisite copper plate line engravings from the watercolours held there. Most plates required small botanical details- the tips of 1980-1990. The thirty-five Parts are drawings. All of the plants included for stamens or the gradation of colours on a flower, for example - to be painted in by presented in green solander boxes publication were new to European botany. By 1784 all of the plates had hand by artists using sable brushes. that measure approximately been completed but, for a variety of reasons, Banks delayed publication. 78.74 x 60.96 x 12.7 cm. Each print is encased in a mount which contains the botanical information, On his death in 1820, having served as President of the Royal Society together with the date and locality where the specimen was collected, and the London, Editions Alecto, in for forty years and recognized as the great panjandrum of European names of the artists and engraver who worked on the image. association with the British Museum, science, Banks bequeathed his library and herbarium, together with the 1980-1990. Florilegium plates, to the British Museum. The set comprises: Parts 1-15 Australia 337 plates; Part 16 Brazil 23 plates; Parts $94,500 (full set) 17-18 Java 30 plates; Part 19 Madeira 11 plates; Parts 20-27 New Zealand 183 A hundred and sixty years later the unpublished plates, nearly a ton plates; Parts 28-31 The Society Islands 89 plates; Parts 32-34 Tierra del Fuego 65 of finest copper, were found encased in their eighteenth-century plates; and supplement of 5 plates. wrappers, in a cupboard in the Botany Library of the Natural History 94 ALESANDRO LJUBICIC 95 Banksia Integrifolia also known as Coast Banksia grows along the east coast of Australia, hence the name, 2020

Alesandro Ljubicic Never had so great a number of completely unknown plants been Banksia Integrifolia also known as harvested from the one location. To the European way of thinking, the Coast Banksia grows along the east sheer volume of strange, unique and potentially useful plant specimens coast of Australia, hence the name, collected by Sir Joseph Banks and Dr Daniel Solander, at the place that 2020 became known as Botany Bay, was a one of the founding reasons for Cooks Endeavour voyage. 132 x 132 cm $9,800 They came to pick flowers. To press and dry those specimens between sheets of paper. To draw, paint, identify and describe the natural world. They chartered the mechanics of the natural world, the how of things, yet as with much scientific exploration they held an almost complete disregard to the broader consequences of those systems of knowing. 96 ALESANDRO LJUBICIC 97 It has an attractive habit and many showy flower spikes, 2020

Alesandro Ljubicic Knowledge and even beauty has their darker sides. In It has an It has an attractive habit and attractive habit and many showy flower spikes, 2020, Ljubicic many showy flower spikes,2020 reflects on Sir Joseph Banks’s voracious appetite for enquiry and the subsequent publication of Banks’ Florilegium, or the seven hundred oil on clear primed cotton and thirty-eight copperplate engravings of plants collected on Cook’s 112 x 112 cm First Voyage round the world. Knowledge and beauty, that existed long $7,800 before their ‘discovery’.

In these two paintings for Navigating Cook, Ljubicic continues the long line of artists engaging with the botanical study. Whereas Banks and Sonlander’s concern lay in the orderly documentation of specimens, Ljubicic reinterprets the same subject with a vivacity and joy that taps into the dynamism of Australian flora. 98 KATHLEEN NANIMA RAMBLER 99 My Father’s Country, 2020

Kathleen Nanima Rambler Kathleen Nanima Rambler creates figurative landscape paintings of her My Father’s Country (21-20), 2020 father and mother’s country near Barrow Creek, 280 km north of Alice acrylic on linen Springs. Having grown up in the area Rambler’s work is nostalgic, a way 107 x 107 cm for her to connect and remember home. As a teenager, she would often $3,300 stay with her Aunty who was a well-established artist and assist her to paint.

Part of the community of Ampilatwatja, Rambler creates Arreth, Kathleen Nanima Rambler paintings of ‘strong bush medicine’. The artistic community of My Father’s Country (50-20), 2020 Ampilatwatja made a conscious decision not to paint Altyerr ‘dreaming stories’. Their intention is to pay homage to the continuing use of acrylic on linen traditional bush medicine and demonstrate the veritable source of life 107 x 107 cm that the land provides. $3,300 Rambler’s work is recognisably detailed created through fine dot work. The vivid colours are inspired by the change of light and sky across the land. Her new works for Navigating Cook simply bare the same title, My Father’s Country. Together they reflect upon the importance of land, one that has sustained the Alyawarr people of Ampilatwatja for generations.

“This is the painting of my Father’s country, where I grew up. After the rain the green comes, from all the fresh grass and plants. It’s a nice peaceful happy time after rain.”

— Kathleen Nanima Rambler 100 JAMES COOK & CHARLES GREEN 101 Scientific results from theEndeavour Voyage, published by the Royal Society, 1771

Cook, James and Charles Green. Three important articles relating to some of the chief scientific Three printed articles relating to concerns of Cook’s Endeavour voyage, particularly the Transit of the transit of venus, and magnetic Venus as observed from Tahiti, excerpted from the Philosophical variation in the pacific. Transactions of the Royal Society for 1771 (articles XLIII-XLV). Cook Small quarto, pp. 397-436, with a wrote little for publication: the first piece here, “Observations... at folding plate and the title page for King George’s Island in the South Sea” (24 pp. with folding table and the Philosophical Transactions Vol. engraved plate) represents his report of observations made by himself LXI bound in; and the Endeavour’s astronomer Charles Green. An interesting plate in marbled wrappers. shows diagrammatically the two men’s differing observations of the transit. The second, more technical piece is “Variations of the compass, London, The Royal Society, 1771. as observed on board the Endeavour bark... Communicated by Lieut. $3850 James Cook” (11 pp.). The last piece, “communicated” by Cook, is a 4-pp. printed letter “Transitus Veneris & Mercurii... 1769, observatus” concerning the 1769 transit of Venus at Batavia as observed by the astronomer Johan Mohr (see Beaglehole, i, p.442).

The Cook bibliographer Holmes noted the first two articles, but not the third.

Beddie, 647; Holmes, 94 & 95 (the third piece not noticed). 102 LUCY DYSON 103 Death on Hawaii, 2020

Lucy Dyson Lucy Dyson is a Berlin-based Australian artist and animator who has Death on Hawaii, 2020 worked with musicians and filmmakers from Beyoncé to Paul Kelly. Her intricate collages are recognised for their compelling and unique Found images, paper collage narratives, often underpinned with a light-hearted and colourful sense Mounted on Hanhemuhle of humour. 32 x 26 cm $1,200 framed As noted by its title, Dyson’s work Death on Hawaii (2020) responds to Cook’s death on February 14th in 1779. The Hawaiians initially welcomed Cook and his crewmen, but as history books tell the Europeans outstayed their welcome and the trip ended violently.

John Webber, the official voyage artist, depicted this scene with Cook positioned with his back to the Hawaiians, heroically signalling to the crewmen to cease fire. Artist John Cleveley’s depiction, based on first- hand accounts and sketches from his brother, a carpenter on board the voyage, comparably shows Cook fighting for his life, a rifle in hand.

In Dyson’s recreation, Cook is out-numbered by spears. Readily sourcing material from second-hand books and vintage magazines she says: “Collage easily enters the surreal through the endless combinations of seemingly random images to create new connections, just like in our dreams, and I don’t think I’ll ever tire of exploring these mysterious and often playful – sometimes witty – combinations.” Her work points to the complexity in deciphering fact from fiction and how narratives and perceptions can shift through shuffling a composition or adding a magenta sunset. 104 105 106 ALEXANDER SHAW 107 Exceptional artefact from Cook’s Pacific voyages: with 56 specimens of native tapa cloth including a suite of 17 extra specimens, most of them Hawaiian, 1787

SHAW, Alexander. An exceptional and very rare artefact arising from the three voyages of expanded example includes 17 additional cloth of the time when Cook’s sailors were spreading their James Cook in the Pacific, Alexander Shaw’s Catalogue has long been samples, bringing the total to 56 specimens, and may stories of the alluring South Seas, while drawing room A Catalogue of the Different regarded as one of the rarest and most desirable of all Pacific voyage have been prepared in 1805-1806 (based on dated chatter throughout the land luxuriated in descriptions Specimens of Cloth collected in the books, in which the printed text is slender compared with its large watermarks of some blank leaves). Most significantly, of the new exotic. The publication forms a tangible three voyages of Captain Cook… cloth specimens: samples of indigenous tapa cloth collected by Cook’s most of these additional specimens were collected link between these narratives, the indigenous cultures Quarto (220 x 164 mm.), pp [8, men, at times of first or very early contact with native peoples; Tahiti by Cook’s men and officers in Hawaii. There were of the South Pacific and Hawaiian Islands, the myriad comprising title and three leaves and the Hawaiian islands are amply represented. This is an example of relatively few Hawaiian specimens in the copies first personal and trading relationships that developed of descriptions], with 56 tapa cloth one of very few copies to contain an additional series of 17 specimens, issued. between the islanders and mariners, and the genteel specimens interleaved between mostly of Hawaiian manufacture. world of gentleman collectors and their cabinets of or tipped on 30 blank leaves, with The production of this book reflects the great curiosities. Recently the National Library of Australia sample numbers in manuscript 1-39; Tapa is made from the bark of the paper mulberry and breadfruit curiosity aroused by tapa, a fascination that has mounted a splendid exhibition, “In Cook’s Wake: fine copy in its original publisher’s trees, specially prepared and pounded with mallets to form continuous drove competition between collectors of ‘artificial Tapa Treasures from the Pacific”, the catalogue binding of sheep-backed marbled sheets. The rich and earthy decorations are created from dyes curiosities’ and generated an active market for the for which contains important essays on Tapa cloth boards, preserved in a morocco- extracted from various roots, berries, leaves and flowers and the sheets brought home by Cook’s men. The preface and specifically on Shaw’sCatalogue by Nat Williams backed box. patterns, quality and size of tapa reflect the social status and prestige of the book contains descriptions of bark cloth and Erica Ryan of the Library; Erica Ryan has made London, Alexander Shaw, 1787. of their original owners. The material was irresistible to Cook’s men manufacture by Cook, Anderson, Forster and an considerable progress in establishing many of the who described its manufacture in some detail, a process likewise anonymous officer titled ‘one of the navigators’ and details of the manner in which Shaw’s book was Exceptional artefact from Cook’s recorded by the voyage artists Sydney Parkinson and John Webber. is followed by the list of the specimens compiled by published. Pacific voyages: with 56 specimens Shaw. The list is indeed rich in fascinating details; for of native tapa cloth including a suite The book was published in 1787, some seven years after the return of example, we learn that the various uses of the tapa: Beddie, 3640; Forbes, ‘Hawaiian National Bibliography’, of 17 extra specimens, most of them the Resolution and Discovery at the conclusion of the third voyage. The ‘wore (sic) by the people in the rainy season’ or ‘used 139; Hawaii One Hundred, 7; Holmes, 67; not in the Hawaiian. earliest copies issued typically contain just 39 samples, as listed by at the human sacrifice’. Some of the notes in the list catalogue of the Hill collection; Donald Kerr, Census $450,000 Shaw in the preface. later, some copies had additional cloth specimens are longer, and doubtless arise from tales told by the of Alexander Shaw’s Catalogue of Different Specimens added, probably in response to new supplies of tapa that became mariners who collected the tapa in the first place (as of Cloth Collected in the Three Voyages of Captain available, likely from the sale of the collections of Sir Ashton Lever and boasted on the title page). Cook to the Southern Hemisphere, 1787’ (University of David Samwell (the latter surgeon’s mate of the Discovery during the Otago, dunedin, 2015). third voyage, and author of the equally rare Narrative of the Death of The Shaw Catalogue is of great significance as a Captain James Cook, published a year before this). This very desirable repository of unique original tapa, but it also speaks 108 109 110 SARAH STONE 111 An Intimate Family Album with beautiful Original Watercolours, 1790’s

STONE, Sarah [SMITH]. An exquisite unrecorded album of watercolours by Sarah Stone, the Sarah Stone (c. 1760-1844) was a teenager when she Of the six exotic parrots, one has been firmly artist who made such a decisive contribution to the early natural was employed as an artist by Sir Ashton Lever, the identified as an African Grey, Psittacus erithacus Album of forty fine watercolours by history of the Pacific and Australia, particularly by her work recording owner of the greatest eighteenth-century collection (Jackson, p. 21), two are certain to be Indonesian the artist of the Leverian Museum the diverse objects in the Leverian Musuem. The album is a testament of natural history and objects of curiosity. She “spent species, and one is considered to be a (probably signing under her married name, in to Stone’s range and skill, and is likely to be a key that will help unlock hours in Sir Ashton Lever’s museum, faithfully drawing juvenile) Rainbow Lorikeet. As yet, the precise nature striking original condition. more details of her later career, the least known period of her work as and painting mounted birds, insects, mammals, fishes, of the other two remains unknown, although one could England: partly dating from the an artist: the great majority of works in the album are signed with her lizards, fossils, minerals, shells and coral from all feasibly be a Rosella. A fourth watercolour depicts 1790s, assembled as an album circa married name and therefore date from after her 1789 marriage. It is a over the world, as well as ethnographical artefacts three beautifully-rendered seabirds, two gulls and a 1825-1830. fascinating and enigmatic assemblage, with a clear provenance to her brought back from exploratory voyages, including tern, on a rocky outcrop overlooking a bay. family, dominated by a series of Stone’s signature depictions of sea- those of Captain Cook” (Jackson, Sarah Stone, p. 9). Quarto album, 40 original life, exotic birds and artificial curiosities, including a fine image of the Such is Stone’s connection to Cook’s voyages that it The album also includes an uncommonly fine depiction watercolours tipped onto coloured mysterious “Tahitian Chief Mourner” acquired by Captain Cook. has tended to obscure her profound importance for of seven exotic shells, dominated by a large Charonia, pages, most signed “Sarah Smith”, the early natural history of Australia, despite her as well as a fine Cone with purple striations and ornately gilt-printed title-page with There are six wonderful depictions of parrots, including what seems central role in the illustration of First Fleet surgeon another with an opalescent green. Another familiar added hand-painted monogram in certain to be a slightly ragged Rainbow Lorikeet (still recognisable John White’s Journal of a Voyage to New South Wales inclusion in the Leverian were sharks (and their teeth), gilt reading “JLS & SS”; the binding despite the vagaries of taxidermy in this era). The wide variety of (1790). which must explain why the present album includes a of an embossed design of maroon subjects encompasses religious icons, bucolic barnyard scenes and a fine example of a shark, very similar to one depicted roan, with central classical motif number of rural and coastal scenes that appear to show holidayers. Although the album itself dates from the 1820s, it is in Stone’s so-called Sketchbook I (see Kaeppler’s surrounded by an ornate floral The latter images, which frequently feature a young couple, suggest clear that many of the watercolours are much earlier. Holophusicon, p. 72). pattern, signed by the manufacturer that this may be a very personal selection: it is difficult not to speculate Indeed, the fact that the works are signed Smith (not Remnant & Edwards with gilt- that some of the scenes in England and the highlands of Scotland (or Stone), together with the condition of some of the The last of the definitively Leverian works is an stamped “Scrap Book” lettered on perhaps Switzerland), may in fact be autobiographical. The volume can birds, is the closest thing to a time-stamp that could exceptionally important depiction of the Tahitian the spine. be dated on its very specific binding to the late 1820s, around the same be imagined on an undated watercolour: after 1789 Chief Mourner, the religious dress of tapa, shells time that her husband John Langdale Smith was afflicted by chronic because of the change in her name, but before the and feathers which fascinated Cook, who personally An intimate family album with illness, dying in 1827. Stone has added the monogram “JLS & SS” to the end of the 1790s because their appearance broadly acquired the examples that ended up in the Museum. beautiful original watercolours by title-page, surely indicating that the album was meant as a memento, or matches those in other works of this pioneering era, Stone’s depiction here is not unlike another of Sarah Stone perhaps a gift, possibly for the couple’s only child, Henry. such as the awkwardly posed birds in the Museum her watercolours now in the Bishop Museum (see $145,000.00 Leverianum (1796). Kaeppler, Artificial Curiosities, p. 124-5), but even a 112 113

cursory comparison makes it quite clear that two distinct outfits are depicted; in short, it is possible that the sketch depicts the “lost” example of the dress from the second voyage, at one point recorded in the Leverian collection.

Provenance: Gilt monogram “JLS & SS” (for John Langdale Smith and Sarah Smith), the embossed binding manufactured by Remnant & Edwards in the late 1820s. By the twentieth century the album was in the possession of Elizabeth Bateman, who worked at Hall’s Bookshop in Royal Tunbridge Wells, Kent, from 1955 until her death in 1983, and with her descendants until recently sold.

Christine E. Jackson, Sarah Stone: Natural Curiosities from the New World; Adrienne Kaeppler, Holophusicon: The Leverian Museum; [King & Lochee], Catalogue of the Leverian Museum (London, 1806); [Leverian]. A Companion to the Museum, (late Sir Ashton Lever’s) (London, 1790).